With the end of the year in sight, it’s time to take a look back at what 2016 had to offer. What’s clear is that the startup industry is still flourishing, with many young entrepreneurs that have plenty of innovative, disruptive ideas for the future. The following days we will be looking back at the startups that stood out to us particularly, and ask them about 2016 and their plans for the future. Today: the full body virtual reality suit of VRee.
Suit up for a new reality
With the real world turning for the worse, it is no surprise that the alternative thrives. Virtual reality is hot, and Eindhoven startup VRee makes the most of it. Their VR-platform connects the real reality with the virtual reality. Key feature is their full body suit, tracking the movement of players and translating that to the virtual environment. This has not only gained the company quite a bit of attention, but also quite a bit of seed money. Founder Andy Lürling is happy with how the reality of 2016 turned out: “It’s been an incredible year, without any notable downsides.”
Google, Oculus and HTC
“We started the next phase of the company with a new, fitting name VRee, where we previously called ourselves VRC. Together with Pillow’s Willow VR Studios, we’ve developed a first successful playable demo of VRisb. It’s an active eSport where you actually play a frisbee battle in a virtual environment. We’ve also enabled multiplayer full body experiences in VR, while spectators can follow or even interact with the game in real-time. And we’ve also come in contact with a lot of interesting people and companies. Companies like Google, Oculus, HTC, but also several eSports providers and content developers.”
Unknown amount of money
2017 is shaping up to be a pretty good year for VRee as well, also because of the big pile of cash they managed to secure. At the end of this year, a couple of weeks ago, they announced raising their first round of funding. The amount is not disclosed, but apparently it is enough to be the highlight of the year for Lürling: “Securing the funding was the biggest step we took. This makes it possible to expand the team and accelerate our growth.”
2017: a new summit
“It feels like we climbed a mountain in 2016. And with the funding and the demo of our product, we’ve reached the top. But looking from that summit we see a much higher mountain we are planning to climb in 2017. This means we’ll do the first commercial try-outs the coming year and this spring we want to organize our first eSports tournament. The goal for 2017 is to have a global launch to get the VRee platform on the map and to raise additional funding. And in the beginning of 2017 we’ll announce something really cool about our organisation. We’re really looking forward to this, as it already has a positive impact on VRee.”
